The invention concerns a method for managing a cooking process in a cooking chamber according to a cooking program with a cooking process probe inserted at least partially into a product to be cooked in the cooking chamber to detect at least two temperature values by means of at least two temperature sensors, comprising a detection of temperature curves detected by the cooking process probe of a surface temperature T0 of the product to be cooked, and a core temperature KT with a cooking process probe, and/or a cooking chamber temperature.
Methods are known with which the further process management of a cooking event is derived from a detected core temperature of a product to be cooked, in particular in the form of a cut of meat. However, these methods lead to unsatisfactory and irreproducible cooking results when the sensor for detecting the core temperature is not exactly positioned in the core of the piece of meat, and thus the temperature in another part of the product to be cooked is detected instead of the temperature of the core.
Therefore, cooking process probes for managing a cooking process were developed, with which a plurality of temperatures could be detected inside a product to be cooked, and at least one further temperature outside the product to be cooked, preferably on the surface of the product to be cooked; see DE 299 23 215 U1. Given the temperature detected in the product to be cooked, the core temperature of the product to be cooked can be determined during cooking through extrapolation from the corresponding time curves, even if the cooking process probe was not exactly positioned in the core. Thus, a cooking process can be reproducibly controlled, and its duration predetermined, by employing a known cooking process probe that was inserted into a product to be cooked. However, the known cooking process probe contains no possibility of detecting whether the cooking process probe was inserted into the product to be cooked at all or if, inadvertently by faulty operation, it was placed in the cooking chamber outside of the product to be cooked, or outside the cooking chamber altogether. In such cases, the faulty insertion results in irrelevant and nonsensical temperature values for the cooking process management that will mismanage the cooking process if they are consulted for the cooking process management.
An indication device provided at a cooking process probe is known from DE 31 04 926 C2, with which the resistance value of a product to be cooked is measured and compared with a default reference value. If the difference between the measured resistance value and the reference value exceeds a predetermined threshold, it is reasoned that the cooking process probe is not located in the product to be cooked, and the cooking process is aborted or terminated. However, the disadvantage with this cooking process probe is that, in addition to the temperature sensor, the indication device and its appertaining processing devices are necessary for determining the resistance value, and that the determination of the default value, as well as the threshold value, is afflicted with a certain unreliability that can itself lead to an unnecessary termination of the cooking process.
Furthermore, a diagnostic system for monitoring of cooking profiles is known from U.S. Pat. No. 6,142,666 that, in addition to a display, enables storage of thermal signatures or characteristics during an operational mode of a cooking device. These thermal signatures or characteristics are measured by a temperature sensor (that is also used to regulate the cooking temperature), collected, and then saved in a table. The diagnostic system determines whether the cooking device is working under normal operating conditions from the saved thermal signatures, that preferably exhibit the first or even higher temperature derivations. It can also be provided that overall cooking profiles are acquired, graphically presented, and compared with a reference cooking profile, on the one hand to indicate the condition of the product to be cooked, and on the other hand to differentiate by means of the diagnostic system with the default profile between normal and incorrect cooking conditions. However, what is disadvantageous with this diagnostic system is that only the temperature of a cooking medium can be measured by the temperature sensor, and not that of the product to be cooked. Furthermore, the diagnostic system can not identify a specific faulty operation, in particular an incorrect arrangement of the temperature system, in order to undertake appropriate control of the cooking device. Furthermore, the diagnostic system requires an extensive electronic circuit, including storage units, that raises the cost of the diagnostic system.
Moreover, a method for the monitoring of a temperature sensor for an automatic transmission of a motor vehicle is disclosed in DE 198 55 971 A1. In this method, either the offset error of the temperature sensor during a cold start is determined by forming the difference relative to a comparison temperature (for example, the motor temperature or the outside temperature) and the temperature value measured by the temperature sensor, or, upon reaching a predetermined limit temperature, the temporal derivation of the values supplied by the temperature sensor is generated, and it is checked whether these lie within preset boundary values. However, what is disadvantageous with this method is that, as before, it is not possible to determine an error type of the temperature sensor, rather only to observe an overall deviation from a normal behavior.